Recycle your own 4×12 cab part II: New Life.

December 27, 2015

So I leveled up my future ex-husband status this weekend by being equal parts handy and completely absorbed by my hobbies.

“Sorry honey, I could’ve made you a new dining room table to eat at by yourself, but I made a new pool table for me and my buddies instead.”

This WAS an old Peavy Valveking 4×12 cab. This is an economy model to begin with but I had researched enough to know that I was primarily looking for good wood and didn’t necessarily need any other quality components since I’d be replacing them all anyways. Really cheap cabs are made of particle board and the most expensive boutique cabs are anywhere from 11-13 ply plywood. This one is somewhere in the middle being composed of 3/4 inch birch plywood for the important panels (like the one you hang your speakers from) and 1/2 inch plywood on the sides (which is still more than strong enough for my purposes.

Me. My knife. My mitts.

I made the trip to Oakland and picked this up for 100 bucks. The tolex was in pretty mad shape (which was what I was looking for) but the construction seemed solid and the grill cloth had minimal wear. I’m actually lucky about the grill cloth. I HAD planned on replacing it but upon taking the cab apart, I realized that would add like another 5 steps due to the construction of the cab. You’d basically have to take the whole thing apart just to get the grill in and out. I decided to un-screw it and leave it in there so I could refinish the whole thing but the original grill remains. After I put the thing back together, I actually kind of dug how you could see some years on it. The wood by itself has all these wonderful little imperfections so I’m glad that the grill cloth has the years to match.

Model 001. Going to a plastic shop this week to get a custom grill badge made.

The cab came loaded with the stock speakers which looked completely fine but my original intent was to load the cab with some totally BROOTAL Ted Weber TONECVLT speakers so I’ll probably throw these on Craigslist and get a few bucks outta them.

The Tolex came off pretty easily with just a knife and my mitts. Taking the whole thing apart was a pretty easy affair as well. I’d say altogether the most time consuming part of the process was sanding it down so I could refinish the wood. The adhesive residue left by the tolex was a bitch to get through but I threw on Dopesmoker and Earth-Hex;or printing in the Infernal Method and it actually turned into a very meditative and rewarding process.

I’d never refinished wood before but it was a pretty no-brainer process as well. I went with a DEEP . . . RICH . . . (Sniff) . . . Mahogany color. 3 coats of that followed by 3 coats of heavy duty polyurethane finish. The final product is better than I could’ve imagined. You can see the age of the wood and imagine how many house shows that the strait edge hardcore dude played on it throughout Oakland.

I may eventually replace the castors to something a little bit more trustworthy. The new heavy duty wiring harness is on it’s way and I’ll eventually get those new SICK AND BROOTAL speakers. I’m going to have all my lifters sign the inside of the cab this week as a sort of time capsule; except one that we can listen to. And listen we will. I’m planning on keeping it in the lair and hooking it up to the PA for a major upgrade to our current stereo. Trolling opportunities are numerous including pinch harmonics after I go for a pun or riffing/headbanging in my lifter’s line of sight during 90% attempts.